Eastercon
Eastercon report. Stupidly long - those who aren't interested in fannish doing probably want to skip it altogether, or at least go to the summary at the end. Those who are a bit more curious might want to read Monday's part as well, as I have a little rant.

EDIT: This has got far, far more comments than I was expecting, and I'm not sure where half the people commenting have found it. I linked it from anonymousclaire, and I know it's linked from Trufen.net, but if you found it somewhere else could you leave me a comment? Ta.

Friday afternoon I arrived at Hinckley station along with a number of people I deduce must be fans, by their large number of beards, piles of luggage, and (the real giveaway) an Interaction tote bag. I'm glad fandom is so easily identifiable, as we all get taxis together. I register and check in, and wander about the hotel a littlle. I hadn't really believed people when they told me how tacky the inside was, but it's all true, and the windows of tacky crap are real. Soon my third row partners in crime arrive, and we manage a trawl of the dealer's room before going to the first of many panels with guest of honour Richard Morgan. He was joined by Charlie Stross, Ken MacLeod, and a moderator who moderated well except for talking too much when I wanted to hear more amusing stories of bureaucracy and computing stupidity from Charlie. I stayed around for "Have I got Books for You", a HIGNIFY-style panel which was sporadically amusing, but the humour came from the source material which was mainly culled from the internet, rather than from the panellists themselves. I made a swift exit halfway through and somehow found myself in the bar, a pattern which would repeat itself throughout the con.

Friday evening marked both a high and a low point of the con. The Not the Clarke awards panel was great, horribly biased though I am since it featured Niall and Geneva. It's a shame there wasn't more dissent among the panellists, but I can't ask you all to start disliking River of Gods just to liven up a panel.

The low point was sampling the hotel curry banquet, where the main ingredients appeared to be salt, salt, more salt and some yellow food colouring, compounded by tiny tiny water glasses. After half an hour of dubious poking and eating the bits of courgette we gave up, and ended up once again in the bar, which had a high level of people in togas. I felt something pulling on my handbag, and discovered that he had become entangled with Peter Weston's bag and he was dragging me slowly towards the bar. I decided to follow the example of my elders and betters, and stayed in the bar until it was time for Adult Just a Minute, which I don't think I have words to describe.


Saturday morning I was awake and positively cheery in time for breakfast, after which I realised there was no panel I wanted to see until 11.30am. This was "The Medium and the Message", yet another panel with Richard Morgan. This was a discussion of the different techniques required to tell a story in different mediums, and ended up with the inevitable discussion of comic to film adaptations, and a small digression to discuss how wonderful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was. Still a pretty good panel, although I would've liked to see more panellists than just Richard Morgan and the nameless moderator, good though he was.

I was feeling brave enough to wander over to a panel on my own, and so I left the rest of the guys at the Young Heroes panel while I went to US Civil War 101. I know (well, at the time) nothing about the civil war, but I figured any panel with Peter Weston, Mark Plummer and Farah Mendlesohn was never going to be less than interesting. I was surprised by how engrossed I got in the subject, and it didn't hurt that it was in Conference 14, filled with comfy chairs.

One of the events I was most looking forward to was the George Hay Memorial Lecture. Given last year by Francis Spufford I thought it would be a hard act to follow, but Armand Leroi was excellent. He gave a talk based on his book Mutants: On the form and shape of the human body, which was both interesting and informative and explained the science without dumbing down, even if it was a little familiar in places to me. I had a few questions after the talk, and while Niall got a copy of his book signed he was kind enough to talk to us about them. Some of you may be aware that I can do a really freaky thing with my arms - I can put my hands on my hips and make my elbows meet in the middle, in front of my chest. I thought it was flexible shoulder joints, but it's a known mutation (I think it's affecting a transcription factor, but we didn't go into too much detail) involving my collar bones, and in a more extreme form I would be born without any at all. I was momentarily taken aback when he leaned across the table and started poking about at my neck, though the explanation quickly followed.

I skipped Robert Rankin's guest of honour speech to have a restful hour in the dealer's room, talking to both fishlifters. I got to part of Geneva's panel (well, a panel featuring Geneva I suppose) on "Was Fandom Fecked by Media?" Conclusion: no, and we can even learn something from their cons. The Redemption or Discworld style ones, anyway, not your Starfury/SFX Event/Wolf Events giant expensive media con.

And now it was time for Doctor Who. Confession time (don't kill me, Stewart): I'd already seen it once. But it's different on the big screen with several hundred people who all cheer when the sonic screwdriver is used.

Straight after Who it was the Hugo nomination announcement. I'm not going to comment on the actual nominations right now, but I am excited about almost every category, pleased that a lot of what I nominated has made it to the ballot, and I'm going to have great fun reading all the nominees. When they announced River of Gods as the final Best Novel nominee, making it an all-British shortlist, I though Niall might just explode with excitement.

The BSFA awards followed shortly afterwards. Winners are here. I'd read Mayflower II in a spare hour earlier in the morning, and while it's good I would have preferred The Faery Handbag to win. The Baxter was my second choice though. Which reminds me of an exchange I overheard on Saturday morning, from two women wandering along with BSFA ballots: "Ooh, The Faery Handbag. That sounds a bit camp," says Lady No. One. "Yes," replies her friend, "I think it's one of those gay things." Boggle.

Post-awards we persuaded Niall to drive us off into Hinckley to acquire alcohol, caffeine, and sugar. We thought about having a room party, but it was so last minute and haphazardly organised that it turned into the usual suspects sitting around arguing about Doctor Who. (I thought it was OK, not fantastic, and that Billie Piper acted fairly well but still mings very high on any scale of ming.) The clocks went forward as we spoke, and I staggered off to my room at 4am.


Sunday morning I left Nick snoozing away while I made it to breakfast (complete with zombies) and the Eastercon bid session. Which was rather short, as there was no bid for 2007. I followed this by visiting the panel on Collecting Fanzines, one of the few panels I attended where Richard Morgan was not in evidence. Again I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy this session, but it was excellent - a small session with an interesting panel and intelligent questions, and I came away with the desire to write a fanzine, a terrible fear that it would be total rubbish and pale in comparison with the works of other writers, and a pile of recommended fanzines to read. I can't leave out Greg Pickersgill's comment that it was as if he had fashioned Geneva Melzack out of plasticine in his own image, which is both complimentary and disturbing in equal measure.

After this I departed for Robert Rankin and Jasper Fforde's talk about what makes them laugh. It appears that in Jasper Fforde's case it's Robert Rankin. He was good, but he's not as fun to listen to as Rankin talking about his propensity for injuring celebrities on a regular basis. I wasn't that impressed with the running of this panel: the moderator didn't really attempt to rein in Rankin's natural showman tendencies and Fforde was overwhelmed by it, and he made some attempts to be funny instead of leaving it to the professionals. I still laughed until I cried, so it was worth it, but I was disappointed to miss the panel on writing different cultures with Ian MacDonald and Geoff Ryman (and, of course, the ubiquitous Richard Morgan).

3pm saw a last minute addition to the programme: the Not the Hugos panel. Organised by Niall that morning, he still managed to get a turnout that more than filled the allocated room, a top notch panel, and a host of Hugo nominees and authors in the audience. I asked a question at the end, and despite having in my head exactly what I wanted to say, I still said something which conveyed almost nothing of what I intended to say. I think I will stick to my strong points in the future, which seem to be advertising the panel by writing the details in velcro lettering on my chest. It was suggested I sell advertising space on it for a small fee, but I'm not sure attempting to see space on my chest is a terribly good idea.

Sunday evening Niall, Hoggy and I escaped the con hotel and its vast reserves of tat for a trip to Birmingham, where we could eat proper food and dork with Dan, Aileen, Dan, Tim and Jane. Tim's Doctor Who knowledge seems to know no bounds, but he was too busy explaining the crapness of the Pertwee era to be that filthy, oddly. We then returned to Hinckley and attempted to shoot ping pong balls across the rotunda and drop string on Frank Wu, before heading to bed about 3am.


By this point I'm running low on sleep, but I still make it to breakfast the next morning by the skin of my teeth, and on to the Eastercon Forum panel. This year it is on the Greying of Fandom, or how to get more young people into Eastercon, and chaired by Dave Lally, who  I haven't seen before but is excellent. I don't think anyone had the answer to this one, I certainly don't, but I think there were some good ideas in there – welcoming new fans in program items, encouraging them to volunteer, trying to have student rates and cheap accomodation to allow them to try Eastercons out cheaply. I did get the worrying impression that a lot of the reason for encouraging new fans wasn't because we want to meet new people and introduce them into the wonders of fandom, but because they want some young people to take over the hard work of Eastercons and let them relax as they get older. I appreciate that a lot of the same people have been running cons for some time now and they'd love it if someone took over, but it did rub me up the wrong way. On a similar note there was a complaint that there was a lack of gophers at this year's con, and that young people weren't volunteering enough, and the comment that young people were happy to be on and organise programme items but didn't want to volunteer. I didn't like that at all. Surely we should be celebrating that there are young fans coming along who have the talent and the skills to make really good programme items? Or are they expected to pay their dues by years of volunteering before we allow them to do what they do best? Besides, Geneva helped run a fanzine table, several of us gave a hand in the dealer's room, and we spent a fair chunk of last year's Eastercon being newsletter minions, so I'm not feeling too guilty for not volunteering enough.

I had a mildly embarassing moment at the beginning of the panel too – I was working on autopilot having been awake about half an hour, and I wandered into the main hall and sat down . It was only when I looked up I realised I'd wandered into completely the wrong panel, and had to beat a swift retreat as Peter Weston appealed to us not to leave yet, as they hadn't even started reenacting the Battle of Gettysburg...

By midmorning on Monday I could feel everything starting to wind down. I checked out and had a quiet hour in the reception before Ken MacLeod's guest of honour spot. This was very low key – he read part of Learning the World to us, before taking audience questions. It wasn't very well attended, possibly because it was on Monday afternoon, but it was enjoyable.

And so I went to my last event of the con – bouncy castles. Yes, bouncy castles. They were awesome, and I can't think of a nicer way to end a weekend than watching a bunch of respectable adults bouncing around like seven year olds. Lovely. (EDIT: I have since discovered a number of impressive bruises which I suspect were caused when I got sat on while playing Capture the Flag. Still worth it.) And I caught a train back with minutes to spare, and it happened to be the same one as the CUSFS guys, so I had company all the way home, and they informed me that there is still a Cambridge SF Group which meets in a pub not far from my house, so I plan to try going to that. I've got enough books and fanzines to last me well into the summer.


In summary

Good things:

• Staying on site. Last year I stayed at home and commuted, and so I didn't want to stay too late when I faced a 45 minute drive home. Also, no beer drinking was possible.


• I didn't go to that many panels, but those I did go to were mostly excellent.


• The room ajr and I had was the closest one to the programme rooms we could have had - it was so close it was quicker to go and use our own loo than the public toilets. Being less than 25 metres from the dealer's room is handy too, especially when you're Nick and you buy 90 books.


• Bouncy castles. BOUNCY CASTLES!


• Having both a smoking and a non-smoking bar was great.

Not so good bits:

• Hinckley = middle of nowhere. 


• Hotel breakfasts and lunches, not bad. Hotel dinner, we didn't even try after the first time round.


• There wasn't a great deal of programming, and there were times when I found that nothing appealed to me. Unfortunately there were also timeslots with two items I really wanted to see, but such is life. Also, with 90 minute slots I would have preferred some panels which were still going strong after an hour to use the overflow time a bit more.

And on to the absolute best part, the people. I was a bit less shy this year and talked to more people outside my immediate friends group. ang_grrr, hawkida, del_c and peteyoung and especially the fishlifters were always happy to talk to me and made me feel incredibly welcome, and there were lots more besides. I was still too shy/intimidated to go up and start conversations with some people I would have liked to talk to, but I'm sure I'll get better at that. The usual third row suspects were a geeky pleasure to be with, as always.

I'll see you all at Worldcon, where I expect Niall and Geneva to take over fandom in a bloodless coup and make everyone write fanzines about Ian MacDonald books.